Aiding Peyton Manning’s Return: Tiring, but Not Thankless

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — About two hours before kickoff Sunday, one of the most important members of the Denver Broncos will walk onto the field at Levi’s Stadium to prepare for the Super Bowl. He plans to run for a bit, and catch 50 to 75 passes. After finishing his pregame routine, he will retreat to the locker room, cool down and change.

Then he will watch the game from the sideline.

Jordan Taylor’s contributions to the Broncos’ postseason push can be quantified by what he wore on the team’s charter flight to California: a custom-fitted charcoal suit that, he said, was the nicest he has ever worn, and probably ever will.

Peyton Manning purchased that suit for him, as well as two shirts and ties, as a token of appreciation — to thank Taylor, a spindly rookie on Denver’s practice squad, for extending his career.

The week leading up to the Super Bowl always teems with hyperbole — the best this, the most that — but Manning, who is not one to embellish, believes he might not have been able to gut out his recovery from a debilitating left heel injury without Taylor.

For the final six weeks of the season, three mornings a week, 90 minutes every morning, Taylor served as Manning’s personal receiver, a job that required him to do whatever Manning asked as he hustled to recuperate in time for the playoffs.

Before the team practiced, Taylor, 23, would meet with him on their indoor field and run the routes Manning wanted, in the order Manning wanted, at the depth Manning wanted.

Taylor took handoffs. He ran up and down the field, again and again, if Manning worked on the two-minute offense that day.

“He’d walk back into the locker room like he just ran 30 miles,” receiver Jordan Norwood said of Taylor. He added: “That’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Jordan’s going to look back on it like, ‘Peyton’s my homeboy.’ No one can ever take that away from him.”

Taylor views himself not as the chosen one but the only one.

“I kind of fell into it,” Taylor said. “There weren’t any other receivers on the practice squad.”

However true that is, he and Manning began forging a relationship during off-season workouts, which Taylor joined in May after being undrafted out of Rice, where he played with Broncos Coach Gary Kubiak’s son Klein. Now a scout for the Broncos, Klein gave Taylor some intelligence before the draft that influenced his decision after it: Denver was not planning on selecting a receiver.

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Taylor played for the Broncos in the preseason, but his greatest contributions since then have come on the practice team.CreditJoe Mahoney/Associated Press

Seduced by the chance to work with Manning and an appealing depth chart, Taylor in training camp impressed Manning with his propensity for catching passes at their highest point, if not his musical awareness. Manning invited Taylor to a U2 concert in Denver, then poked fun at him for not knowing any songs.

At 6 feet 5 inches, and with speed that his position coach, Tyke Tolbert, described as “sneaky fast,” Taylor was never running to stand still. Within the first few days of camp, Demaryius Thomas and the Broncos’ other top receiver, Emmanuel Sanders, discussed with cornerbacks Chris Harris Jr. and Aqib Talib the free-agent receiver most likely to make the team. The decision was unanimous.

“Jordan Taylor’s going to be a player,” Thomas told them.

Manning took two weeks off after a Nov. 15 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs that he left with a partly torn plantar fascia before kind of asking and sort of telling Taylor that he wanted him to help. So on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, Manning would greet Taylor with a typed sheet listing every play they would practice.

They began on the right side, with Taylor running curls and fades, hitches and slants, and then moved to the left. Manning called audibles before the snap. He simulated defenses. He identified where the middle linebacker would be.

“Everything he wanted to do was as close to the game as possible,” Taylor said.

In those workouts, Taylor estimated he caught 100 to 150 passes. The other day, Manning said he was often guilty of saying, “One more,” which turned into just one more post route, just one more 20-yard comeback route. And if Taylor did not run the route to Manning’s satisfaction, he would do it again.

“He plays on both sides of the ball,” Manning said, referring to Taylor’s occasional role as a free safety for the scout team, “and here I am putting him through a pretty intense workout.”

The night before the Broncos’ season finale against the San Diego Chargers on Jan. 3, Manning, knowing he was not starting, asked Taylor if he minded going out onto the field for a rigorous workout. When Brock Osweiler was removed in the third quarter after committing three turnovers, Manning entered and, playing for the first time in six weeks, guided the Broncos to a 27-20 comeback victory that clinched the top seed in the A.F.C.

In a television interview afterward, Manning praised Taylor and said, “Remember that name next year.”

Watching from his home in Tyler, Tex., Taylor’s older brother, Ryan, thought he misheard Manning.

“He’s talking about Jordan,” Ryan said in a telephone interview. “I had to rewind it. I was like, Did I hear that right?”

Because their pregame session worked so well the first time, Taylor and Manning engaged in a scaled-back version before Denver’s playoff victories against Pittsburgh and New England. Since returning, Manning has played nearly 10 quarters and tossed 78 passes without an interception.

Taylor surprised his family last week by saying that he could secure tickets to the Super Bowl, so a small delegation will be flying in Saturday night. His family intends to arrive early Sunday for what could be the final game of Manning’s career, and anyone who wants to watch him warm up with the man who helped make this chance for an enchanted ending possible should follow suit.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Aiding Manning’s Return: Tiring, but Not Thankless . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe